


Recurring Dreams: Whispers of Immortality

by Gileonnen



Category: Echo Bazaar
Genre: Donating One's Body to Science, Gen, Implied Cannibalism, Language of Flowers, Practical Hagiography, Rings of Roses, Spoilers: Foreign Office, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You dream you're sitting on the edge of a long wooden table. Although a bright light shines from directly above you, the room is dimly lit. All around you, tiers rise up in a half-ellipse, their rails polished smooth by the press of many hands. They vanish into the darkness beyond your circle of light – you can't make out the ceiling or the walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recurring Dreams: Whispers of Immortality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mxingno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxingno/gifts).



> Following the tradition of Echo Bazaar, I have appealed to T.S. Eliot for the name of this dream sequence; find the curmudgeonly "Whispers of Immortality" here: http://www.bartleby.com/199/22.html

  


**A dream about a theatre**

You dream you're sitting on the edge of a long wooden table. Although a bright light shines from directly above you, the room is dimly lit. All around you, tiers rise up in a half-ellipse, their rails polished smooth by the press of many hands. They vanish into the darkness beyond your circle of light – you can't make out the ceiling or the walls.

Somewhere in the darkness, someone stifles a cough.

  


**A dream about many chambers**

You dream of an atrium at night, overgrown with lyre-flowers and zealous passiflora. The air is thick here, oppressively hot beneath the high glass ceiling. You walk between rows of red and purple flowers, breathing in a scent like old meat.

Through the glass-paneled walls, you can dimly make out other chambers, other atria strangled with greenery, but the leaves conceal the exterior from view. They flutter like restless black wings, although there is no breeze to move them.

  


**A dream about poppies**

You dream of a woman in white, threading blood-red poppies through your fingers. You ask her to stop, but she only winds a length of white gauze around your wrists and palms until the poppies vanish behind it. "There," she says. "That wasn't so bad, was it? Now lie back for me."

You lie back upon the long wooden table and close your eyes. You can feel her placing poppies over the lids; the petals are skin-soft.

  


**A dream about a hall**

You dream you're passing through a long hall. The walls pulse and swell. The wallpaper shimmers blue – or is it red? – as you walk. There are shapes like letters worked into the design, but it hurts to look at them.

>   
>  **Stop to look at the letters**
> 
> You pause to examine the wallpaper, and your fingertips trace the patterns as though tracing a lover's lips. Each touch makes your heart race. _A reckoning not to be postponed indefinitely_ , says one sigil. _The channels that convey both wind and soul._
> 
> Your eyes are bleeding, but you can't look away. _A song without which life ceases, composed of only two notes_ –
> 
> **Press on**
> 
> Is the hallway growing narrower? You look back, but the way you have come has grown dark behind you.
> 
> "They'll be sharpening their teeth for you," says a ginger cat, and then it steps delicately into the hall mirror.

  


  


**A dream about a pocketful of jade**

You dream of a misty quadrangle at the university. The windows of the library are all dim, but a few bright candles illuminate the glass-paneled atrium; you can see the leaves pressing thickly against the walls. In your pocket, a few fragments of jade click quietly together.

The professor takes your wrist between his thumb and two fingers. For an uncomfortable moment, you stand like that, arrested in his grip; if you were to twist free, you think, his hand would tighten like a vise.

>   
>  **Free yourself!**
> 
> You wrench your hand out of the professor's and thrust it deep into your pocket. "Keep your jade!" you tell him, but when you draw your hand out again, you find that you have a handful of teeth.
> 
> **Stand still**
> 
> The professor looks pleased. "Such a strong pulse," he says, and licks away a fleck of red at his lips. "So rich. Will you let us ... partake?"

  


  


**A dream about a rose**

You dream you're in a long-abandoned atrium, surrounded by roses so dark as to appear black. If you push aside the vines, you think, you could see your reflection in the glass panel beyond; the atrium is bright, and the world outside so very dark.

You reach into the creeping rose vines.

>   
>  **A thorn!**
> 
> You draw your hand back, hissing and putting your pricked fingers in your mouth, sucking at the blood. The taste is impossibly good; you latch your lips over that flesh and draw deeply, until your mouth floods with rose-copper.
> 
> **Push the vines aside**
> 
> Your reflection regards you from the glass wall of the atrium. It is haggard, unkempt and unwashed; it looks like one of the soulless. There is something hollow and hungry in its eyes.
> 
> All around you, the leaves flutter like angels' wings.

  


  


**A dream about a bottle of red liquor**

You dream that you are lying still upon a long wooden table, with railed tiers rising all around you in a half-ellipse. Your wrists are buckled down with leather straps. From the base of your sternum to your groin, someone has drawn a line in fading blue ink. You turn your head and fix your eyes on a bottle of ruddy liquor as the surgeon bends to make the first incision.

There is something small and shining in the depths of that bottle, but you can't make out its shape.

  


**A dream about asphodel**

You dream you're walking among tall white flowers, each petal translucent as a drowned woman's skin. In the distance, you can see the dome of St. Fiacre's rising through the mist. You shed red poppies as you go; you would brush the petals from your cheeks, but your hands are lead-heavy. You try to call for help, but you can say nothing but _REND RIP TEAR TEAR THEM ALL_ –

It should terrify you, but your voice is a soft and aching soprano, and the words come forth in a song like a hymn.

  


**A dream about vivisection**

You dream that you are lying open upon the surgeon's table, and in the tiers around you, half-familiar faces draw near to peer at your viscera. "Observe: _nephesh_ ," the surgeon says, holding aloft something red and glistening.

" _Nephesh_ ," the students repeat in dutiful chorus. " _Nephesh, spiritus_ –"

You want to correct them, but your mouth is full of rose petals.

  


**A dream about ascension**

You dream that you fly high over the roofs of London, and from every rooftop, a song hails you. Your wings spread black against the false stars, blotting out the moonish light.

  


**A dream about defeat**

The leather straps dig into your wrists and your ankles; blood blooms from each, palms and feet stained rust-red. Around the operating table, someone has scattered a ring of roses.

You must not cry out, because if you cry out, you will lose the game.

At your feet and your hands, someone has placed bottles filled to the lips with red liquor. From each one, a soul peers at you with empty, solemn eyes.


End file.
